Mount Pleasant Magazine Nov/Dec 2017

57 www.MountPleasantMagazine.com | www.ILoveMountPleasant.com | www.BestofMP.com feature Theater as a boatswain’s mate and charter member of the USS Lindsey. He helped provide cover for the mine sweeps at the Battle of Iwo Jima and strafed its beaches, taking out six enemy shore guns from just a few dozen yards offshore as the Japanese fired back. “I was a teenager then; I was all excited about it,” he said, shaking his head. “I didn’t have enough sense to be afraid.” Close calls during Japanese attacks were an everyday occurrence for Rowell, who shot down an enemy plane or two as well. But April 12, 1945, aboard the USS Lindsey, was one day he will never forget. “It was the largest group of airplanes in the sky I’ve ever seen at one time, like a large covey of birds,” he recalled. Seven kamikaze planes peeled from that group and aimed for the ship. Two of the intruders were shot down and three turned away, but two kept coming. The first plane came in from the starboard side, where Rowell was a gunner. “It came so close I could see the outline of the pilots’ heads, and I breathed a prayer, ‘Dear Lord, not now.’ I shot the wing off. It flipped and hit the fire control room and another 20mm gun crew.” The second plane dropped a bomb on the ship’s port side, blowing the bow off the ship and ripping out 120 feet up to the last watertight bulkhead. The captain’s quick response to change from full speed ahead to full speed astern between impacts kept the ship from sinking. “One of the gun turret’s hydraulic motors hit right next to me. My pants were ripped open. I was in a state of shock; shrapnel holes in the deck that were no bigger than a quarter looked too big to step across.” He paused. “In the cleanup, we found bodies with no heads, some with nothing beyond the navel. It reminded me of hog-killing time with bodies stacked upon another, except these were not hogs. They were people that I had known like family. Fifty-seven dead, 57 wounded. That’s when the war became real.” At about the same time the USS Lindsey was being towed to dry dock, Staff Sgt. Mel Price, a B-29 radio operator in the U.S. Army Air Corps, was on his very first flight mission nearly 900 miles away. They were making an emergency landing on Iwo Jima. With 72 holes in the plane, rapidly losing oil and the bomb bay doors stuck open, the pilot said there was no way they could make it back to the base on Tinian. “It was just a few weeks after the Battle of Iwo Jima in 1945. Twenty-thousand Marines were wounded and 7,000 died for B-29ers to be able to fly safely from Tinian to Japan and back. If it wasn’t for Iwo Jima, I wouldn’t be here today. I owe my life to the Marines.” During his year of service overseas, Price flew in three different B-29s and made another forced landing in Okinawa. High-altitude bombing had not been successful, and orders were to bomb at 8,000 feet in the daylight. To make the B-29s lighter, armor plates were taken out, the gunners were left at the base, and the turrets and ammo were stripped out. Essentially, the planes were easy, defenseless targets, full of explosives. “It was more effective, but the losses were heavy. For every 100 planes that went out, five didn’t make it back each day,” he explained. “We received orders that nobody goes home until the war ends. I was only 19; I didn’t have a brain at the time. I was sent there for a job, and that was my mission. I never thought I wouldn’t come back.” Price recalled that Tinian was a beautiful island, but the food was terrible. The good food – cans of turkey, chicken and macaroni and cheese – were given only to those flying a mission each day. Many lived together in groups in low tents, sleeping on cots without sheets or pillows. When a space opened up in a Quonset hut, it was because that soldier was killed. When the war ended, Price turned down a promotion that was offered if he re-enlisted and opted to take a ship Staff Sgt. Mel Price of the U.S. Army Air Corps.